mountain shines brightly, but there are few men on the mountain; and
more service may often be rendered by the torchlight, there where
the crowd is. It is in the humble lives that is found the substance
of great lives; and by watching the narrowest feelings does
enlargement come to our own. Nor is this from any repugnance these
feelings inspire, but because they no longer accord with the
majestic truth that controls us. It is well to have visions of a
better life than that of every day, but it is the life of every day
from which elements of a better life must come. We are told we
should fix our eyes on high, far above life; but perhaps it is
better still that our soul should look straight before it, and that
the heights whereupon it should yearn to lay all its hopes and its
dreams should be the mountain peaks that stand clearly out from the
clouds that gild the horizon.

87. This brings us back once again to external destiny; but the
tears that external suffering wrings from us are not the only tears
known to man. The sage whom we love must dwell in the midst of all
human passions, for only on the passions known to the heart can his
wisdom safely be nourished. They are nature's artisans, sent by her
to help us construct the palace of our consciousness--of our
happiness, in other words; and he who rejects these workers, deeming
that he is able, unaided, to raise all the stones of life, will be
compelled for ever to lodge his soul in a bare and gloomy cell. The
wise man learns to purify his passions; to stifle them can never be
proof of wisdom. And, indeed, these things are all governed by the
position we take as we stand on the stairs of time. To some of us
moral infirmities are so many stairs tending downwards; to others
they represent steps that lead us on high. The wise man perchance
may do things that are done by the unwise man also; but the latter